There are about 14,000 obscure or quasi-offensive words that iOS won't fix for you.

Anyone who sends obscenity-laced iMessages to their friends already knows that there are certain words that iOS' auto-complete feature just won't help you finish. I've had many a swear remain mistyped or, worse, get corrected to a non-swear despite fairly obvious typos.

Those aren't the only words that iOS won't help you type, though. The Daily Beast has gone through the iOS dictionary and found about 14,000 words that appear to be spelled correctly when typed correctly, but the built-in spellcheck tool won't help you fix them otherwise (at least, not before you type the words enough that the phone adds the terms to your custom dictionary). They found that many of them were simply obscure—words like "sheepshank," "sempstress," and "nephrotoxin" made this list. However, there were plenty of others that are perfectly common but more likely to be objectionable. The following words made their highlight reel.

abortion

abort

rape

bullet

ammo

drunken

drunkard

abduct

arouse

Aryan

murder

virginity

bigot

cuckold

deflower

homoerotic

marijuana

pornography

prostitute

suicide

For the obscure words, the piece speculates that Apple just didn't want to consume space in the stock spellchecking wordlist with words that would be used so rarely. Jillian York, Electronic Frontier Foundation director for international freedom of expression, suggested that Apple's omission of the more frequently used but potentially sensitive words came close to censorship. It "isn't censorship outright," she said, "but it is annoying, and it's denying choice to customers."

In any case, your phone won't prevent you from telling your pals about a drunken prostitute or your homoerotic pornography collection. You'll just have to know how to spell those words on your own.

Promoted Comments

It "isn't censorship outright," she said, "but it is annoying, and it's denying choice to customers."

No, it's not. It's not even in the same ballpark as censorship. It's so that people don't accidentally write "I'm going to rape you" when they meant to write "I'm going to rate you", because, you know, the former could get you thrown in jail, while the latter is a (probably) completely innocuous comment.

ummm.... it isn't like the EFF did all the leg work to go through the iOS dictionary, the dailybeast did. So how exactly are they "denying air to the very real issues" simply by commenting on something when asked? Your donation didn't fund a study on the iOS word dictionary...

My take is that this is basically a list of words that Apple would rather not create false-positives. Since the entire spell-check feature is a convenience, calling the exclusion of a word is hardly censorship by any stretch of the imagination.

Throwing aside the whole "should they 'censor' words in the first place"..some words I can kinda sorta understand why people may considering them offensive. But others are baffling to me.Abort?Ammo?Those are two very common words that very frequently are using with no conjunction towards offensive things.weird.

SwiftKey on Android has a similar list of words that it doesn't "know" at first, and will actually autocorrect you to something different if you spell one correctly. Fortunately it only takes one entry of the word "sucks" to update the custom dictionary, but it's still annoying.

ummm.... it isn't like the EFF did all the leg work to go through the iOS dictionary, the dailybeast did. So how exactly are they "denying air to the very real issues" simply by commenting on something when asked? Your donation didn't fund a study on the iOS word dictionary...

Voted you up, because you deserve a response. Here it is:

EFF unearns my support by dignifying stupidity like this with any kind of response. ""This isn't censorship. Please don't waste our time," said Jililan York from EFF, before hanging up" would have been a far more useful response.

Why? Because it would put this "news" about a company lowering the chances they are hit with lawsuits from idiots who got "autocorrected" to saying "I'd like to murder you" in the correct "context" (among a dozen other equally good reasons, like increasing the chances autocorrect gets it correct, instead of guessing that you're trying to type some obsolete Shakespearean word).

Apple don't *prevent* you from typing "murder" -- although they'd be within their rights to do so -- they just *make you type it in full*. Stupid non-issue, and the EFF, of all organisations, should know better.

My take is that this is basically a list of words that Apple would rather not create false-positives. Since the entire spell-check feature is a convenience, calling the exclusion of a word is hardly censorship by any stretch of the imagination.

Blocking these words from messages would be censorship.

I was initially confused why Apple would bother with such a meek but schoolmarm-ish form of pseudo-censorship, but this actually makes sense. At some point a product designer probably decide that they'd rather not have sentences "Please get some rape fruit at the market today" end up on Autocorrect failure blogs or breathless moral panic pieces by local TV news stations.

Of course it does reduce the functionality of the software somewhat, so it would be nice if you had the option of turning it back on, but you know, Apple knows best...

It "isn't censorship outright," she said, "but it is annoying, and it's denying choice to customers."

No, it's not. It's not even in the same ballpark as censorship. It's so that people don't accidentally write "I'm going to rape you" when they meant to write "I'm going to rate you", because, you know, the former could get you thrown in jail, while the latter is a (probably) completely innocuous comment.

My take is that this is basically a list of words that Apple would rather not create false-positives. Since the entire spell-check feature is a convenience, calling the exclusion of a word is hardly censorship by any stretch of the imagination.

Blocking these words from messages would be censorship.

Makes good sense.

But it's pretty ironic what pops up on damnyouautocorrect.com despite such efforts.

The feature is definitely irritating, especially when you're frantically typing about something exciting or stressful (which is probably when most people [try] to throw in their fucks and shits, and you've got to constantly go back and correct Apple's Fisher Price dictionary.

As for suggestions the software learns which words you use, I've had my iPhone for 6 months and it still refuses to correct 'fcuk', or to stop changing 'shit' to 'suit'.

My take is that this is basically a list of words that Apple would rather not create false-positives. Since the entire spell-check feature is a convenience, calling the exclusion of a word is hardly censorship by any stretch of the imagination.

Blocking these words from messages would be censorship.

Makes good sense.

But it's pretty ironic what pops up on damnyouautocorrect.com despite such efforts.

ummm.... it isn't like the EFF did all the leg work to go through the iOS dictionary, the dailybeast did. So how exactly are they "denying air to the very real issues" simply by commenting on something when asked? Your donation didn't fund a study on the iOS word dictionary...

Voted you up, because you deserve a response. Here it is:

EFF unearns my support by dignifying stupidity like this with any kind of response. ""This isn't censorship. Please don't waste our time," said Jililan York from EFF, before hanging up" would have been a far more useful response.

Why? Because it would put this "news" about a company lowering the chances they are hit with lawsuits from idiots who got "autocorrected" to saying "I'd like to murder you" in the correct "context" (among a dozen other equally good reasons, like increasing the chances autocorrect gets it correct, instead of guessing that you're trying to type some obsolete Shakespearean word).

Apple don't *prevent* you from typing "murder" -- although they'd be within their rights to do so -- they just *make you type it in full*. Stupid non-issue, and the EFF, of all organisations, should know better.

I just don't think it something worth dropping support for the EFF over. Someone calls up and says "hey this thing apple does, what do you think about that?" and they say "well it isn't really censorship, but it sure is annoying and they don't give you any way to change it, so it does affect consumer choice". I certainly don't see it as important, but I also don't see it as some huge waste of EFF resources to simply comment on it with their opinion when approached.

My take is that this is basically a list of words that Apple would rather not create false-positives. Since the entire spell-check feature is a convenience, calling the exclusion of a word is hardly censorship by any stretch of the imagination.

Blocking these words from messages would be censorship.

Makes good sense.

But it's pretty ironic what pops up on damnyouautocorrect.com despite such efforts.

You actually think those are for real?

Considering that my autocorrect once swapped out "SCOTUS" for "Nova Scotia", I'd be inclined to believe at least a good portion of those are real.

What's so rare about the word "Sheepshank"? Every Boy Scout or Sailor either does or should know what it is, how to use it, how to tie it, when to use it, etc.

Heck, I can tie one in three seconds. Of course, I can do a Bowline one handed in a shorter time (helps in case you break your arm falling off a cliff, and some person throws you the end of a rope and says "Here, tie this around you so we can pull you up!"

It "isn't censorship outright," she said, "but it is annoying, and it's denying choice to customers."

No, it's not. It's not even in the same ballpark as censorship. It's so that people don't accidentally write "I'm going to rape you" when they meant to write "I'm going to rate you", because, you know, the former could get you thrown in jail, while the latter is a (probably) completely innocuous comment.

it's actually because, in America at least, someone mistyping "i'm going to rape you" will end up with either the sender, and/or the recipient of the message suing Apple for "emotional distress" or some such bs. it's to protect Apple, not their idiot users

It "isn't censorship outright," she said, "but it is annoying, and it's denying choice to customers."

No, it's not. It's not even in the same ballpark as censorship. It's so that people don't accidentally write "I'm going to rape you" when they meant to write "I'm going to rate you", because, you know, the former could get you thrown in jail, while the latter is a (probably) completely innocuous comment.

It "isn't censorship outright," she said, "but it is annoying, and it's denying choice to customers."

No, it's not. It's not even in the same ballpark as censorship. It's so that people don't accidentally write "I'm going to rape you" when they meant to write "I'm going to rate you", because, you know, the former could get you thrown in jail, while the latter is a (probably) completely innocuous comment.

Not to call it censorship, but this doesn't explain many of the words on the list (drunkard, ammo, arouse, etc.). I don't know if it denies choice to customers, but we can see that there is a team at Apple making decisions about what words to include and the implication is that they are taking political concerns into account. This isn't about censorship of course, but it is about understanding the effects that our devices have on the way we express ourselves.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.